Archive for the ‘Child & Family Debates’ Category
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End prohibition against drugs, regulate their use
Saturday, October 8th, 2011
October 8, 2011
Study after peer-reviewed study has proven that Insite saves lives, but an even more effective harm reduction strategy would be to eliminate entirely the current prohibition against drugs and regulate their use. It is hypocritical of a society to legally prescribe certain powerful drugs for dealing with pain and mental anguish, while banning others that are often chemically similar. It is the black market on drugs that makes Insite necessary. It is poverty and mental health problems that lead people to black market drugs…
Tags: crime prevention, Health, ideology, standard of living
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Supervised injection sites: Ideology comes with big blinkers
Thursday, October 6th, 2011
Oct. 05, 2011
The exercise of ministerial discretion, the court said, must rest on “evidence” and the “principles of fundamental justice.”… “On the facts as found here, there can be only one response: to grant the exemption.” These words are about as blunt as a court can use toward a government whose view of evidence is “arbitrary” and in whose hands decisions based on rights would be “risked.”
Tags: crime prevention, Health, ideology, rights
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Today, 10 Canadians will kill themselves
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
Oct. 04, 2011
Today, 10 Canadians will take their own lives, a per capita rate three times that of the United States’, largely due to the staggering number of suicides among aboriginal Canadians. In fact, suicide is the leading cause of death in men ages 25 to 29 and 40 to 44, women ages 30 to 34, and the second cause of death among adolescents… it affects adolescents struggling with sexual identity… it touches those in our armed forces, our police and firefighters, and… it deeply affects seniors as they struggle with the difficulties of growing old.
Tags: mental Health, standard of living
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Why Hospitalizing Sexual Predators Is Not Mollycoddling
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
Oct. 3, 2011
Is this mollycoddling? Hardly, since the offender may never be released. Moreover, no release is permitted unless and until a board of psychiatrists judges the offender is no more likely to offend than any other citizen. He stays in custody, and that decision is supported by a committee of the provincial cabinet followed by an order-in-council from cabinet as a whole… The issue is whether we’re going to let a sexual molester back on the streets without any therapy, or let him out only after he has been treated and found safe to release…
Tags: corrections, crime prevention, mental Health, rights
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Scary are the Tory measures to combat crime
Saturday, September 24th, 2011
Sep. 24, 2011
Canada is about to adopt policies whose failures are well understood in the U.S. and whose costs will be large but remain unknown. No wonder the government admits its policies are not based on “the latest statistics,” but on another order of analysis – namely, raw politics. The Harper government has this weird contempt for solid evidence… Sloganeering prevailed, as in “tough on crime,” despite the evidence that most of the proposed measures wouldn’t work or had proved to be counterproductive elsewhere.
Tags: budget, corrections, crime prevention, ideology
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The Conservatives’ crime obsession is not magnificent
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011
Sep. 21, 2011
The government is obsessed with the tough-on-crime-and-drugs approach of the United States, even as U.S. conservatives move in the other direction – the Canadian one – because jail costs are outstripping investments in higher education… The government should also be spending some of its political capital, energy and money to address the causes of crime, including poor mental health, addictions and child poverty.
Tags: corrections, crime prevention, economy, ideology
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Sweeping Conservative crime bill only ‘the beginning’
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011
Sep. 20, 2011
Bill C-10, tabled in the Commons on Tuesday, combines nine separate bills that the Conservatives failed to enact into law during their minority government years… It will rewrite laws on the production and possession of drugs, on young offenders, parole and house arrest, pardons and anti-terrorism, among others… Opposition critics denounced the measures as retrograde and costly, but… In many cases, the Tories are increasing, or introducing, minimum sentences for offences… No MP relishes being labelled soft on crime.
Tags: budget, corrections, crime prevention, ideology, rights
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The spark and the blaze [security]
Monday, September 12th, 2011
Sept. 10, 2011
… the “War on Terror” actually causes more violence and death than it prevents, the real threat is our narrow-minded understanding of security. As a young person growing up in this society, I fear not the threat of terrorism, but rather the threat of rapid global climate change, environmental pollution, world hunger, child poverty and growing inequality resulting in attacks on freedom and opportunity. All of these threats in actuality increase the likelihood of war and terrorism.
Tags: corrections, crime prevention, ideology, multiculturalism
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Conrad Black’s broadside against Canada’s prison plan
Thursday, September 8th, 2011
Sep 05 2011
To Black, Canada is about to model the U.S. prison system — which he describes as an inhumane and unjust factory farm that dehumanizes inmates, breeds an underclass that can never reintegrate and will exact a long-term toll on society… the penal system isolates and punishes for life “a very large number of people who have been for the most part socioeconomically comparatively disadvantaged.” … More important than how such treatment “festers in their minds” is how “great a social damage a country does or society does to itself by pursuing that kind of penal and justice system,” he said.
Tags: budget, corrections, crime prevention, ideology
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Zeal to punish eliminates a useful tool
Monday, August 29th, 2011
Aug 27 2011
Unfortunately, conditional sentences… were eliminated in the last session of Parliament, thus ending Canada’s tradition of granting discretion and independence to the judiciary… Perceived as lenient, conditional sentences… have been criticized by the public, the media and advocacy groups… But the study dispelled this misconception and showed they were being used appropriately… Denunciation and imprisonment satisfy society’s desire to punish offenders and reinforce shared values by deterring crime. However, there is little evidence to support the general deterrence argument.
Tags: corrections, crime prevention, ideology, youth
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